15 Answers
15

To remove Ubuntu, you will need a Windows Recovery CD or Installation CD, or a Ubuntu Live CD.

Note: If you don't have a Windows Installation or Recovery CD available, you can download the Windows 7 ISO file (contact Digital River customer support as said in Microsoft help page). You cannot install Windows without a genuine Purchased Product Key though, as these ISO files are 100% legal and will only install as an Evaluation copy for 30 days without a product key.

To remove GRUB:

Grab a Windows recovery media or installation CD and boot from it. You should see this on a recovery media CD.

And you should see this on an installation media CD. Click "Repair your computer" and you should see a screen like the first image.

Open the Command Prompt, then type bootrec /fixmbr into the Command Prompt.

Reboot and boot into Windows. Then follow the steps below to remove the Ubuntu partitions.

If you don't have a Windows recovery CD or you are constrained to download and burn the ISO files mentioned before, you can use Boot-repair. It is a tool that fixes most boot problems(Windows or Ubuntu). I suggest using a Windows CD if possible.

Rather than a cross-posted answer, this answer is actually edited to account for the (substantial) differences between the two questions. +1
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Eliah KaganMay 29 '12 at 0:40

3

You may want to add that you have to delete the partitions twice to make it unallocated before you can extend the volume.
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TannerJul 13 '12 at 18:04

So I followed these steps. But when I deleted the partitions, it showed-up as free space (not unallocated). The extend option of the left partition is not available.
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TruMay 14 '13 at 6:32

1

Thanks. In the end I used a third-party disk management utility to merge the volumes.
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TruMay 16 '13 at 5:50

1

The line "you cannot install Windows with a genuine purchased product key" has a minor error. The word "with" should read "without". (Can't edit this as the change is too small.)
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user111667Jun 23 '14 at 10:50

Actually the solution to this is very easy, anyone can do it. First things first. Download something called EasyBCD (there's a free version, you have to download it into Windows as it's a .exe) http://neosmart.net/download.php?id=1run through the set-up.

Launch EasyBCD and go to the sixth button down, EasyBCD deployment. Since you're a Windows XP user, select Write the Windows XP Bootloader to the MBR then press the big red button called "Write to MBR"

Next head up to the second button called "Edit boot Menu" and select the first option "Skip the boot menu" and click save settings. Congrats, you now have Windows XP bootloader back, and it will automatically boot into Windows, but we aren't done yet. You still have Ubuntu on your system, we want to change that.

Open up disk management and find your Ubuntu partition and the Ubuntu Swap Partition (I assume you know how big it is, [the swap is about two gigs, should be right next to the Linux partition]). Delete the swap first, and then delete the Ubuntu partition. If done properly you will get Unaccounted space for HD and the swap will become "Free Space" time to also fix that.

Next right click on the Free-Space partition (swap space) and delete it again, it should become part of the unaccounted space. Now you don't want to just leave all that empty space on your HD. Right click on your Windows partition now, and click extend the volume. It should default into the maximum size of your HD, (which you want so XP has all the space.) and click continue. There you go, it'll do it's thing and Windows XP should now have your entire HD, Ubuntu will be gone, and you Will have the XP bootloader back. Hope that helped for you!

Thank you. I reviewed this option and it looked promising. However I chose to try out the suggestions from Pestilence as it did not require additional software. I was thinking why add to my issue with more software... when I must already have the tools.. if only I knew how to use them. I did also use the Microsoft Console Disk Management feature to delete the swap and Ubuntu partition... so THANK YOU for the idea.
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eastavinMar 20 '12 at 19:08

The way to "delete" Ubuntu is to delete the partition it's using. That will make the partition available for reformatting and use in another OS.

If you can still run Windows, use its disk manager to delete the Ubuntu partition. You could then format it to use in Windows. Or, perhaps (I don't know very much about Windows) expand an existing partition.

You can also boot the Ubuntu LiveCD and choose the "Try Ubuntu" option. After it loads, find and run gparted and remove the partition.

If Windows and Ubuntu are both gone and you want to reinstall Windows, you can repartition and reformat during the installation.

Since the bootloader doesn't seem to be working, you may also need to restore the MBR (master boot record) after removing Ubuntu. You can usually do that using a Windows install disc, if you have it inserted when you boot up.
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MariusMay 8 '12 at 1:34

You need to restore the MBR that was overwritten by grub when you installed ubuntu. In the old days, you ran fdisk /MBR on your system disk. The way to do it in Windows XP is to run the "Windows Recovery Console" which can be run from the installation disk or installed to the hard drive and run from there.

Thanks. This was good. I found my Recovery DVDs & Recovery Tools CD. The latter started the Microsoft Recovery Console. It then asked to start miniNT or I386 -so based on your command line I chose I386. I then entered FIXMBR with no options. Then EXIT. Microsoft then prompted to choose System Restore, Destructive Reovery or TURN OFF and I chose OFF. When I powered up again it boot straight into XP & did a CHKDSK. My XP again works as it did before my UBUNTU experiment. THANK YOU. Next time I will install it in Windows XP so I can use the add/remove feature rather than this manual method.@Marco
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eastavinMar 20 '12 at 19:03

You can go into the Disk Management utility and delete the Ubuntu partition. Right click My Computer, select Manage, Disk Utility. Once you delete the partition, right click My Computer, select Properties and go to the Advanced tab. Go into the Start Up and Recovery, set Windows as the default operating system and set the Time to display the list of operating systems to 0 and click Ok.

I follow your advice in the first 2 sentences.However in your 4th sentence you say to set Windows as the default OS... This cannot be the problem that causes UBUNTU to boot first as it is currently set to Windows as being the default OS. there is something else that is overriding this that was installed by Ubuntu 11.10... what could that be?
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eastavinJan 29 '12 at 15:58

If you're in to paid software I highly recommend Acronis. Paragon is also good. It has a lot of interesting options. It allows you to do everything you need to in order to do this. The order of operations is:

1)Get live media that will let you perform all these operations without an OS or MBR backup
see acronis link
2)Delete the Ubuntu partitions(probably anything that's not NTFS or FAT32)
3)Resize your windows partition to fill the disk
4)Apply changes and possibly reboot depending on which version of which software you have
5)Run the 'fix boot problems' wizard in Acronis. It's magic.

Alternately, you could use supergrubdisk. Directions on their wiki include screenshots and step by step directions.

If you can boot Ubuntu the Live CD, choose "Try Ubuntu" option. Then try installing it again by choosing manual partitioning, It is the last option in the 'Prepare your disk' step. Reinstall it in the same partition you tried before.

First delete the old Ubuntu partition, (you can recognize the old Ubuntu partition by looking at the partition type column, it should have the type as ext4 or ext3)

Then create a new partition by clicking 'Add' button. In the new dialog change the "Do not use the partition" with ext4, place a 'tick' mark at 'format' check box, and in the bottom select list, select /, then click OK.

Check that, you choose the bootloader install device as /dev/sda (if you are installing on the local hard disk). Then proceed.

See if any error message appears. If it completes successfully, it should give you a message with two options -
"Keep trying Live CD" and "Restart your Computer to use newly installed system". Restart your laptop.

Boot from a live Ubuntu media and wipe the partition table (and MBR) out with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdY bs=512 count=1 where Y is the drive. this will be /dev/sda in a single drive system. This command will blast the first sector of the drive full of zeros eliminating the partition table. Install the new OS you want to install as if the drive were new.

Note: you may have to increase the bs (block size) or count factors on a GPT disk. I haven't been able to find exact numbers but changing count to 8 or bs to 4096 should do the trick.

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! It's unclear how one would follow these instructions. What does it mean to move the "new" or "old" drive into "C: place" or "D: place"? Also this doesn't seem to be answering the question that was asked here. In your case, you switched to a separate hard drive--this question is about removing Ubuntu and going back to Windows on the same hard drive.
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Eliah KaganJan 24 '13 at 9:36